Community Consultation

As a part of our regular classes, today we had a guest speaker come to deliver a talk on community consultation. Michael Pilbrow is currently working on the West Belconnen development in the north of the ACT, the project is interesting for several reasons, but from the point of view of a planning student, the fact that is straddles a sub-national boarder makes it particularly interesting.

While not himself a planner, Michael has worked in a diverse range of fields closely related to planning, and I think his background gives him a unique insight into the process of community consultation. This got me thinking about the way that we conduct consultation here in the ACT and how representative it actually is.

On one hand, we have the long established process whereby 'community councils' are the prime point of consultation for planners, I argued in class that these groups can be unrepresentative and not always indicative of the thoughts and opinions of the broader community.

Conversely, at the other end of the consultation continuum, we have the Time to Talk report, Canberra 2030. A very detailed and thorough examination of what Canberrans thought of their city and the direction they would like to see it move in. However this process takes considerably more time and resources, and the outcomes of such reports can often be fluffy and overly broad - this is not to discount the fact that they do serve a purpose.

So how do we reconcile these two very different ways of consulting communities?

The next logical step in my mind took me to social media. It's a buzzword that's thrown around a lot, but I can see it filling the current gap in the consultation spectrum. There would be several obvious issues around how such consultation is conducted and the ability for groups to manipulate outcomes, but I think it shows a lot of promise in a world that is increasingly connected in every way imaginable.